Are evolutionists afraid of ID movement?
P.A. WAHID
THE EVOLUTIONISTS' reactions to the Intelligent Design (ID) movement are a reflection of their growing apprehension about ID grabbing a place in the domain of science. James Randerson's article (The Hindu, December 14) is an exposure of this hidden fear. The evolutionists see ID as an impending threat to the 150 year-old Darwin's theory.
Nature (April 28, 2005) wrote an editorial calling attention to the growing influence of the Intelligent Design movement in schools and universities in the U.S. and Europe: "This is bad news for researchers. Unlike `creation science,' which uses the Bible as its guide, intelligent design tries to use scientific methods to find evidence of God in nature. This approach makes it less theologically heavy-handed than its predecessor, but it also poses a threat to the very core of scientific reason."
Why should the scientific community be worried about the ID movement? Is the theory of evolution too weak to stand up to ID? Maybe yes. Darwin's theory became controversial from day one of its publication in 1859. The controversy never subsided but has been increasing ever since.
Basic mistake
The basic mistake committed by the scientific community is the outrageous declaration that the theory is a scientifically proven fact. This is as false as the claim of Hwang Woo Suke in stem cell research. If evolutionists are telling the truth, where are the key papers that proved the theory? If someone had proved the theory, s/he would have certainly been `naturally selected' for the Nobel.
Over 35 journals have been listed in Science Citation Index (Institute for Scientific Information, U.S.) in the field of evolutionary biology apart from the non-specialty journals such as Science, Nature, open-access online journal PloS Biology, etc. These and several hundreds of other journals have been spewing out evolutionary information from every corner of the world for long.
Every paper that is published in this field assumes evolution had taken place and the results are interpreted to suit that assumption. Evolutionary literature thus grew vertically and horizontally. Evolutionary biologists tell us chimpanzee and man have nearly identical (98.7 per cent) genomes for establishing their time-worn argument that man evolved from animal.
But until now they have not identified a single identical phenotypic character in both species. The flying fish is supposed to have evolved into perfectly winged animal through gradual change. Our superior intelligence evolved because of our weak jaw muscles! All these stories are mere speculation which even the authors who wrote them will not believe. It is the literature so accumulated that the evolutionists hold aloft as the unquestionable proof of evolutionary theory. In fact the natural evidence is overwhelmingly against the theory.
The critics of Darwinism are mostly scientists and not clerics as is generally believed.
In his book Darwin's Enigma, Sunderland asks: "Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: There is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test." Do these observations imply evolutionary literature is junk? You are the judge.
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